Housing starts have never double dipped, unemployment has never doubled peaked and the double dip has never actually happened.

In late 1972, U.S. housing starts peaked and declined more than 30% before the 1973-75 recession began. As the recession ended in 1975, housing starts bottomed consistently rising until 1977. The same housing starts pattern occurred preceding the 1980s recessions that is striking because there were actually two recessions (1980 and 1981-1982) including two sharp housing starts cycles. Housing starts declined by nearly 30% preceding the 1990-91 recession and, hold for it, housing starts peaked at 2.3M units (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in January 2006 declining more than 50% to 1M units by the time the Great Recession began in December, 2007. NEWS FLASH: I estimate hundreds of thousands of people around the world knew a big recession was coming based on this data alone. Finally, housing starts bottomed last year and will continue to recover as in every other recessionary period.

Housing starts current cycle

U.S. unemployment peaked in 1975 before falling consistently until 1977. The same pattern occurred in ’82-’84, ’92-’94 and will occur again looking back on the 2009-2011 cycle.

Unemployment current cycle

Confidence or at least comfort will be restored in America once we reconcile our history and accept we will repeat it.

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